Quebec emerging managers supported by non-profit initiatives

There is support for the emerging manager community out of Montréal, Quebec.

Pierre-Philippe SteMari According to Pierre-Philippe Ste-Marie, founder and CEO of Razorbill Advisors, a Canadian fixed income manager founded in 2013, there is an initiative called the Emerging Managers Board (EMB), which his firm is a part of.

The non-profit organisation's mission is to promote and contribute to the growth of Canadian emerging managers. So far, it has only gone as far as covering Québec, but it plans to launch in Ontario next year and expand in the rest of the country in the next few years.

Out of the EMB's 50 members, 40 are managers registered with the AMF (Canada's financial regulator), and more than half of them have alternative products, he said during a recent Opalesque Roundtable.

"The EMB's goal is to get the largest pension funds in Québec to invest 1% of their AuM with local emerging managers," he continued. "From our computation that would be the equivalent of C$3bn (US$2.3bn). Once that kind of money is invested towards emerging managers, we think we will find great momentum and be able to support our local talent to emerge."

Then there is the PGEQ (Programme des Gestionnaires en Émergence du Québec, or Quebec Emerging Managers Programme), Ste-Marie said. It is a seeder fund of emerging manager funds, including both long-only and alternative investments, launched in 2015 through EMB. Its committee is run by financial community members such as consultants or pension fund investment committee members, who volunteer for the organization.

"We do not think this initiative is common around the world," he noted. "It created a momentum that is now enabling firms which otherwise may not......................

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This article was published in Opalesque's New Managers a top-down monthly analysis, news and research publication on the global emerging manager space.